Women from Ghana: Their Urban Challenges in Ama Ata Aidoo's Novel Changes: A Love Story

I called the book Changes, because I see primarily a character like Esi the protagonist as being a part of those who are trying to define, or even redefine woman as a lover, as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, even as a granddaughter…. That's why I called the book Changes. In the meantime, it was fascinating to note that, for instance, my Dutch publishers titled the Dutch version of the book Choices. So, they saw her as somebody who had to deal with the issue of choices.

"Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo," by Ada Uzoamaka Azodo

Introduction

Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo stands out among today's many talented and prominent African women writers for her widely acclaimed novels depicting the role of African women in a changing world. Like many people of her generation Aidoo witnessed Ghana's 1957 transition from British colony to independent state, as well as the conflicting interests and competing power bases that emerged in its post-independence years.

Specifically, in the 1980s Ghana went through changes of governments, military coups, and economic downturns that affected not only the rural but also the urban populations. In an era of growing globalization and a new world order such turmoil brought about a new set of changes.

This paper analyzes the various social, economic, and cultural conflicts and challenges Ama Ata Aidoo's female characters experience in her 1991 novel Changes: A Love Story, which takes place mainly in urban environments in West Africa and Europe in the 1980s. It has been praised by many literary critics for its thought-provoking portrayal of African women's redefined roles in their post-independence urban environment, and in 1993 it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa region.

The story line is about three Ghanaian professional women, Esi, Opokuya, and Fusena, who deal differently with family issues and make attempts to juggle their many obligations toward their husbands, children, and careers in the 1980s. Nevertheless, their husbands are impervious to their feminist thinking and remain unsympathetic. Esi chooses to divorce, prioritizing her career and willingly entering a polygamous marriage—which ultimately becomes an exchange of one set of challenges for another. On the other hand, Opokuya stays in her monogamous marriage despite her many overwhelming wifely duties. Finally, like her counterparts Fusena feels trapped in a marriage that stifles her career aspirations. Ultimately, she ends up sharing her husband with Esi. Through the portrayal of her three major female characters Ama Ata Aidoo conveys an intimate and gender-focused perspective on the themes of love and female celibacy, African women's marriage, sexuality within marriage, and motherhood in urban Ghana during the 1980s. Interestingly, although there are many similarities in the dilemmas the three women face, their individual choices are totally different.

Being Single in Accra, The Capital of Ghana

In "Sugar Daddies and Gold Diggers" (1983) Carmel Dinan analyzes the plight of educated and middle-class women in Accra, Ghana. She explains that "even when women attain economic independence and self-sufficiency, they are still expected to have husbands."¹ Furthermore, a study entitled "Pleas for Domestic Relief: Akan Women and Family Courts" (1997) reveals that African urbanization changed the fabric of Ghanaian society. Some women are heads of households and therefore subvert traditional situations, where conjugal and lineage ties prevail.²

In Changes: A Love Story Aidoo's literary representation of urban Ghanaian women shows Esi living as a single woman for a few weeks before she becomes Ali's wife. Keenly aware of the societal changes affecting Ghanaian women in the 1980s and 1990s and the new dilemmas they faced, Aidoo creates female characters such as Esi, who claims that in the cultural, ideological, and social context of post-independence Africa, there is no place for single women:

OPOKUYA:

"It is even more frightening to think that our societies do not admit that single women exist. Yet …"

ESI:

"Yet what?"

OPOKUYA:

"Single women have always existed here too," she said with some wonder.

ESI:

"Oh yes. And all over...